David Murray Cheltenham Group. WordPress Masterclass. SAMPLE. Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. Release Version

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1 David Murray Cheltenham Group WordPress Masterclass Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. Release Version

2 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 2 COPYRIGHT This manual is covered by International copyright and any copying (by any means) is prohibited. The exclusive copyright holder is Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. DISCLAIMER The advice within this training manual is offered in good faith, but as SEO techniques are continually evolving we make no guarantees regarding the accuracy of information presented or the placement of your website within the search engine results as a result of implementing the information contained within this manual. We make no guarantees of how well you will promote your own website as we do not know you, your technical background or your business skills. Implementing decisions based on any information presented by us is entirely at your own risk. All information contained within this manual is for educational and informational purposes only. Check with your accountant, lawyer or professional advisor, before acting on any information supplied. You agree that our company is not responsible for the success or failure of your business decisions relating to any information contained within this manual. Using the information contained within this manual implies acceptance of this disclaimer. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY In no event will we be liable for any incidental, consequential, or indirect damages (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, business interruption n, loss of programs or information, and the like) arising out of the use of or inability to use the information contained within this manual. In case of any dispute you agree to exclusively pursue legal remedies within the city of Perth, Western Australia and you implicitly agree to exclusive Western Australian jurisdiction in all matters. E&OE All Trademarks Acknowledged Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

3 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 3 Contents FILES... 9 WARNING INTRODUCTION WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ON THIS COURSE...11 ADVANTAGES OF USING WORDPRESS WORDPRESS IS FREE...14 EASY TO INSTALL...14 EASY-TO-USE...14 IMPRESSIVE PROFESSIONAL LOOKING WEBSITES...15 EASY BLOG CREATION...15 SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION...15 MANAGE YOUR OWN WEBSITE...15 EASY CUSTOMISATION...15 EASY SEO...15 FREE WORDPRESS UPDATES...15 TWO TYPES OF WORDPRESS WORDPRESS.COM VS. WORDPRESS.ORG...16 CPANEL WORDPRESS INSTALLATION...16 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SELF-HOSTING VS. CLOUD HOSTING...16 WORDPRESS.COM...16 WORDPRESS.ORG...17 DOMAIN NAMES & WEB HOSTING THINK ABOUT YOUR DOMAIN NAME...18 DOMAIN NAMES AND SEO...18 REGISTER VARIANTS OF YOUR WEBSITE DOMAIN...18 CONSIDER INTERNATIONAL VERSIONS OF YOUR DOMAIN NAME...19 REMEMBER THAT YOUR DOMAIN NAME NEEDS TO BE PERIODICALLY RENEWED...19 DOMAIN NAMES CONSIDER LONGER REGISTRATION PERIODS...19 PLANNING YOUR WORDPRESS SITE THINK ABOUT YOUR CONTENT PRIOR TO CREATING PAGES...20 MAP OUT YOUR PAGE CONTENT PRIOR TO CREATING YOUR WEBSITE...20 CONSIDER CREATING WEBSITE CONTENT WITHIN A MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENT...20 INSTALLING WORDPRESS DEFAULT WEB HOSTING PAGES...21 USING THE CPANEL TO INSTALL WORDPRESS...21 CUSTOMISE YOUR LOGIN AND PASSWORD...24 INSTANT WORDPRESS WHAT IS INSTANT WORDPRESS?...26 A FIRST LOOK AT WORDPRESS PUBLIC VS. ADMIN WORDPRESS VIEWS...34 CREATING PAGES Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

4 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 4 LOGGING IN TO WORDPRESS...44 CREATING A NEW PAGE ENTERING A PAGE TITLE...45 ENTERING BODY TEXT FOR A PAGE...46 PASTING TEXT FROM A MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENT...46 THE PUBLISH PANEL...48 PREVIEWING A PAGE...49 BOLD TEXT FORMATTING...50 ITALIC TEXT FORMATTING...50 TEXT ALIGNMENT FORMATTING...50 BULLET AND NUMBERED LIST FORMATTING...50 TEXT INDENTING...50 TEXT COLOUR FORMATTING...50 HEADING FORMATTING...51 HEADING FORMATTING AND SEO...52 THEMES AND HEADINGS...53 BLOCK QUOTE FORMATTING...53 DISTRACTION FREE WRITING MODE...54 USING PASTE AS PLAIN TEXT...56 REMOVE FORMATTING ICON...56 INSERT CUSTOM CHARACTER ICON...56 USING THE VIEW PAGE...58 TEXT VS. VISUAL TABS...59 VIEWING PAGES USING ALL PAGES...60 OPTION TO EDIT A PAGE EDIT, QUICK EDIT, TRASH AND VIEW...60 DELETING A PAGE...61 RESTORING A DELETED PAGE FROM THE TRASH BIN...62 QUICK EDIT...62 DEFAULT MENU CREATION BY WORDPRESS...66 ADVANCED PAGE OPTIONS SPECIFYING A HOME PAGE...68 CHANGE THE TEMPLATE USED BY THE HOME PAGE...72 SOME TEMPLATES DO NOT DISPLAY THE WIDGET AREA DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE PAGE...74 IMAGES AND WORDPRESS LOGGING IN WITHOUT USING THE LOG IN LINK IN THE META WIDGET SECTION...75 ADDING NEW MEDIA - PICTURES...78 UPLOADING IMAGES...79 EDITING IMAGES...81 ALTERNATIVE TEXT FOR IMAGES AND SEO...82 INSERTING AN IMAGE INTO A PAGE...82 IMAGE ATTACHMENT DETAILS...84 RESIZING IMAGES USING DRAG AND DROP...85 USING THE EDIT IMAGE ICON TO EDIT AN IMAGE...86 RESIZING AN IMAGE USING PERCENTAGE RESIZING...87 IMAGE ALIGNMENT OPTIONS...88 APPLYING ALTERNATIVE OR ALT TEXT TO AN IMAGE...88 APPLYING A PICTURE CAPTION...88 ADDING A LINK TO AN IMAGE...89 SPECIFYING AN EXACT IMAGE HEIGHT AND WIDTH SIZE...91 SPECIFYING IMAGE BORDER AND SPACING...92 LINKING PAGES & POSTS Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

5 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 5 REMOVING A TEXT HYPERLINK...93 ADDING A HYPERLINK TO TEXT...94 INSERTING TEXT LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES...97 CREATING LINKS THAT OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW OR A NEW TAB...98 IMAGE LINKS...99 INSERTING LINKS YOUTUBE VIDEOS INSERTING A YOUTUBE VIDEO INTO A PAGE GETTING THE YOUTUBE VIDEO EMBED CODE POSTS CREATING A NEW POST ENTERING A POST TITLE ENTERING POST TEXT IN THE BODY AREA USING PASTE FROM WORD TO COPY TEXT FROM MICROSOFT WORD TO A PAST PUBLISHING A POST VIEWING A LIST OF YOUR POSTS DELETING A POST DELETED POSTS ARE MOVED TO THE TRASH BIN AND CAN BE UN-DELETED EDITING EXISTING POSTS INSERTING TEXT HYPERLINKS INTO A POST FORMATTING TEXT WITHIN POSTS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PAGES AND POSTS CREATING A HOME PAGE FOR POSTS RECENT POSTS WIDGET DISPLAY EDITING EXISTING POSTS INSERTING AN IMAGE INTO A POST CATEGORIES AND TAGS VIEWING A LIST OF POSTS AND ASSOCIATED CATEGORIES THE UNCATEGORISED CATEGORY CREATING A CATEGORY SLUGS AND SEO ASSIGNING AN EXISTING POST TO A DIFFERENT CATEGORY ASSIGNING A NEW POST TO A CATEGORY WHEN YOU CREATE THE POST DO NOT CREATE TOO MANY CATEGORIES TAGS ASSIGNING TAGS TO POSTS ADDING A NEW TAG USING INSTALLED WIDGETS THE WIDGET AREA DISPLAYING INSTALLED WIDGETS ACTIVE WIDGETS REMOVING A WIDGET ADDING AN INSTALLED WIDGET TO THE WIDGET AREA DISPLAYING THE RECENT POSTS WIDGET THE TEXT WIDGET YOU CAN EMBED HTML CODE INTO THE TEXT WIDGET USE THE TEXT TAB TO GET HTML CODE FOR THE TEXT WIDGET FINDING WORDPRESS PLUGINS VIEWING INSTALLED PLUGINS Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

6 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 6 DELETING A PLUGIN SEARCHING FOR NEW PLUGINS CHECKING OUT PLUGINS SHORT CODES WHAT ARE SHORTCODES? CONTACT FORM INSTALLING A CONTACT FORM PLUGIN CONFIGURING YOUR CONTACT FORM CATTCHA MENUS CREATING CUSTOMISED MENUS RE-ORDERING MENU ITEMS APPEARANCE CUSTOMISATION CUSTOMISING APPEARANCE OPTIONS CUSTOMISING THE HEADER OPTIONS CUSTOM BACKGROUND OPTIONS COLOURS OR IMAGES SETTINGS CUSTOMISING WORDPRESS SETTINGS CUSTOMISING THE SITE TITLE AND TAGLINE CUSTOMISING YOUR WORDPRESS URL WORDPRESS WRITING OPTIONS SETTING THE DEFAULT CATEGORY FOR NEW POSTS CUSTOMISING THE WORDPRESS UPDATE SERVICES CUSTOMIZING THE WORDPRESS READING OPTIONS CUSTOMISING THE FRONT PAGE TO USE A STATIC PAGE CONTROLLING SEARCH ENGINE VISIBILITY CUSTOMISING WORDPRESS DISCUSSION OPTIONS TO CONTROL COMMENTS CUSTOMISING MEDIA SETTINGS CUSTOMISING PERMALINKS FOR BETTER SEO WORDPRESS THEMES WHAT ARE RESPONSIVE THEMES? SEARCHING FOR NEW THEMES PREVIEWING THEMES INSTALLING A THEME DELETING THEMES INSTALLING PREMIUM THEMES USING PREMIUM THEMES INSTALLING A PREMIUM THEME ACTIVATING A PREMIUM THEME CUSTOM THEME OPTIONS HOW TO BACKUP YOUR WEBSITE INSTALLING A BACKUP PLUGIN CONFIGURING THE BACKUP PLUGIN UPDATING WORDPRESS Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

7 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 7 KEEPING WORDPRESS UP TO DATE UPDATING WORDPRESS PAGE TEMPLATES WHAT ARE PAGE TEMPLATES? WORDPRESS AND FOLDERS WHY USE SUB-FOLDERS? PARENT PAGES AND FOLDERS MOVING A WORDPRESS WEBSITE CHECKING YOUR WEBSITE S UPTIME MOVING ISPS CONVERTING A NON-WORDPRESS WEBSITE TO A WORDPRESS WEBSITE BACKUP AND DOWNLOAD YOUR EXISTING WEBSITE RECYCLE FILE NAMES REPLICATING PAGE CONTENT FILE NAME EXTENSIONS MAINTAINING EXISTING FOLDER STRUCTURE FTP WHAT IS FTP? INSTALLING AN FTP PROGRAM SLIDERS INSTALLING A SLIDER PLUGIN UPLOADING IMAGES FOR THE SLIDER REORDERING YOUR SLIDER IMAGES USING SHORT CODES SLIDER IMAGE FILE SIZES SOCIAL MEDIA SHARING INSTALLING THE ADDTHIS PLUGIN FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SHARING MOBILE PHONES & WORDPRESS USING RESPONSIVE THEMES INSTALLING THE WPTOUCH PLUGIN FOR MOBILE PHONE WEBSITE DISPLAY COMMENT SPAM COMMENT SPAM ACTIVATING THE AKISMET PLUGIN DISABLING COMMENTS USING A PLUGIN EMBEDDING A GOOGLE MAP EMBEDDING A GOOGLE MAP INTO A PAGE OR POST EMBEDDING A GOOGLE MAP INTO THE SIDEBAR WIDGET AREA GOOGLE MAPS WIDGET SEO ONSITE VS. OFFSITE SEO INSTALLING AN SEO PLUGIN USING AN SEO PLUGIN HTML SITEMAPS VS. XML SITEMAPS Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

8 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 8 TWO TYPES OF SITEMAPS WHAT IS AN HTML SITEMAP? PREMIUM THEMES AND HTML SITEMAP TEMPLATE PAGES USING HTML SITEMAP PLUGINS WHAT IS AN XML SITEMAP? INSTALLING THE GOOGLE XML SITE MAP PLUGIN BROKEN LINK CHECKER INSTALLING A CHECKER FOR BROKEN LINKS WEBSITE PAGE LOADING SPEEDS GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS & LOADING SPEEDS USING GZIP TO MAKE YOUR WEBSITE FASTER WP SMUSH.IT TABLES TABLEPRESS PLUGIN PRICING TABLES EASY PRICING TABLES TABS AND ACCORDIONS DROP SHADOW BOXES FOR TEXT & PICTURES COLUMNS INSERTING DOCUMENT DOWNLOAD LINKS ISSUES WITH UPLOADING LARGE DOCUMENT FILES HOW TO UPLOAD A WORD DOCUMENT, PDF DOCUMENT OR ZIP FILE SHORTCODES & FORMATTING SHORTCODES ULTIMATE OLEVMEDIA SHORTCODES FONT FORMATTING SIZE & COLOUR PHOTO RESIZING & CROPPING LOW COST CUSTOM GRAPHICS & VIDEOS CHECK OUT FIVERR.COM FREE GRAPHICS, PICTURES & PHOTOGRAPHS STAY LEGAL! ROUNDED IMAGE CORNERS GIMP FREE GRAPHICS PROGRAM GALLERIES USING THE GALLERY PLUGIN FEATURED IMAGES WHAT ARE FEATURED IMAGES? HOW TO ATTACH A FEATURED IMAGE BUTTONS & ICONS CREATING CUSTOM BUTTONS Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

9 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 9 FAVICONS WHAT IS A FAVICON? USING A PLUGIN TO CREATE A FAVICON SEARCHING YOUR WEBSITE USING THE STANDARD SEARCH WIDGET IMPROVING THE WORDPRESS SEARCH UTILITY INCREASE YOUR WEBSITE SECURITY THE ITHEMES PLUGIN CHECKING YOUR THEME WORDPRESS KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS SEO GLOSSARY Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

10 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 10 Sample Files If you are working through this course in conjunction with our video training course, you can find the sample files within a folder called WordPress Sample Files. This folder contains a number of sub-folders containing relevant sample files that may be required for specific sections within this manual. If you are working through this course at a training centre, please ask your tutor for the location of the sample files Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

11 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 11 Warning You use any themes or plugins described within this training manual at your own risk. It is your responsibility to check the quality of all software that you install on your websites or download to your computers. Always make sure that any themes you install are compatible with your version of WordPress. Backup your WordPress installation prior to making any changes or installing any new software Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

12 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 12 Introduction What you will learn on this course This course is about using WordPress to make a business website. The illustration below shows a website that you will be able to create after just a few hours, when you complete this training course. As you can see this website looks good, looks professional and is ideal for a business website. This website has lots of features such as a moving slider across the top of the home page which illustrates selected pages of interest. The website also includes a menu displayed at the top of the screen complete with drop-down submenu items Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

13 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 13 You will learn how to automatically insert social media icons as illustrated below and then associate these with your social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube. You will learn how to insert and customise a contact form allowing your customers to easily contact you with their relevant information. You will see how to embed a Google map allowing your visitors to see exactly where your office is located Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

14 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 14 Behind the scenes you will look at methods to help you optimise your website for the search engines. This is called search engine optimisation (SEO). We will show you how to create a blog that can be linked from the main website menu and which can be run in association with your main website. As we will see normally people expect to see blogs using a slightly different format and a typical example is illustrated below, which you will create as part of this course. Incidentally all of the graphics that we use within this course originated from clipart within Microsoft PowerPoint, so there is no need to purchase expensive third-party graphics. A bonus chapter at the end of this course will even show you how to format pictures so that they are displayed with rounded corners rather than square edges Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

15 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 15 Advantages of using WordPress If you want to create your own website, there are numerous advantages in using WordPress to build the website. Other software alternatives include programs like Dreamweaver but this is expensive to buy, difficult to learn and not suited to a small business owner who simply wants to develop new content and publish it as fast as possible. The table below outlines some of the advantages of using WordPress. WordPress is free You can download WordPress and use it for free. Obviously if you are self-hosting WordPress you still need to pay for your domain name and your web hosting but the software used to create your website is absolutely free. To get the best out of WordPress it is best to invest in a premium theme which is not free but certainly not very expensive. Premium themes as we will see can greatly expand the capabilities of WordPress and allow you to create a business type website, much more easily. Easy to install WordPress is designed to be easy to install and easy-to-use. Many web hosting companies have something called the C-panel which allows a one click installation of WordPress. Easy-to-use WordPress is designed to be easy to use by non-technical individuals. You do not need to understand HTML and you don t really have to understand exactly how WordPress works. The fact that it is database driven software is invisible to most 2016 Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

16 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 16 people who simply use the features offered by WordPress. If you re competent using a program like Microsoft Word then you can certainly create and format your content within your pages and your blogs. Impressive professional looking websites WordPress combined with a few plugins and a premium theme can produce a professional looking business website that you can customise for your particular needs. Easy blog creation At the end of the day WordPress is blogging software so you can use it simply to create a blog or you can use it to create a website and have a blog within your website. Social media integration You can easily integrate your website with your social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. You can also install buttons to allow your visitors to share your content across the various social media sites. Manage your own website One of the great things about WordPress is that whenever you need to make changes or create new content you do not have to send those changes to web designer who in turn will make changes for you. Any time of the day or night and also any place, you can make the changes as you see fit. Easy customisation WordPress is very easily customised when used with both themes and plugins. Easy SEO With a few basic modifications WordPress can be made to be very search engine friendly. You can even install SEO plugins which will make the on-site optimisation even easier for you. Free WordPress updates Once you have installed WordPress it will automatically tell you when updates are available. The same is true of themes and plugins Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

17 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 17 Two types of WordPress It is important to realise that there are two variants of WordPress. WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org WordPress.com is cloud hosted. WordPress.org allows for self-hosting. What this means is that if you are installing WordPress onto your own web server you go to WordPress.org and download the WordPress software. You then install it and have to set it up yourself. cpanel WordPress installation An alternative easy way to install WordPress on your own server is to use the cpanel if your web hosting service provides this. Within the cpanel you will see a one click install button for WordPress. If you go to WordPress.com you can setup a website or blog and the advantage of this is that it is all hosted by WordPress. Advantages and disadvantages of self-hosting vs. cloud hosting There are advantages and disadvantages of using either type of WordPress installation, which are summarised below. WordPress.com Totally free software combined with free hosting. All the updates are handled automatically for you by WordPress Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

18 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 18 The content you are allowed to upload is limited by the terms and conditions of use imposed by WordPress. For most websites this will not be a problem while it may be an issue for others. You cannot install Google AdSense advertising on a WordPress website that is hosted by WordPress. Finally if you want to use the version that is hosted by WordPress they give you a range of options but you cannot expand this range. For instance, you do not have the ability to install any themes or plugins that you want and you can only select from the range offered by WordPress. WordPress.org You can download the WordPress software for free but you are responsible for paying web hosting costs and you are also responsible for purchasing a domain name. You will find some companies offering free hosting for this version of WordPress but if you are a business, you should use a proper paid for hosting service. Free services tend to be slow and prone to a lot of downtime. Even some companies offering paid hosting are actually pretty bad when it comes to Internet speeds and the web server can go off-line without warning. If you re looking for a web hosting service do your research properly and asked the right questions to make sure that you have a fast, secure and above all reliable service. When looking at hosting services price should never be your primary concern, as you do tend to get what you pay for. With self-hosting obviously you have to perform initial installation of WordPress but then you also need to make sure that you maintain your version of WordPress and install any updates as and when they re released. In addition to the actual WordPress software you must make sure that any themes or plugins that you use are also updated on a regular basis. When you self-host WordPress you have total control over the content. You can upload what you want when you want. Obviously web hosted content is bound by the laws of the country you live in and can be complicated because you may also be bound by the laws in whichever country your web server is hosted in. For instance, if you decide to offer an online gambling service, then in some countries this could get you into big trouble. One of the big advantages of self-hosted WordPress is that you have total control over the customisation of WordPress. WordPress when installed out-of-the-box frankly looks a bit boring. As we will see in this course if you are creating a business website, what you should do is to install what is called a premium theme. This can greatly extend the functionality of WordPress and you can also use a theme to improve the look of WordPress. For most people using WordPress as a business website the initial problem is to make the website look more like a website and less like a blog. Premium themes allow you to do this. Again as you will see later in this course you can install plugins that perform a specific function such as performing a regular backup of your website and as we will see there are literally thousands of these that you can download for free. You can use WordPress to simply create a business website or you can use it to create a blog. The most intelligent solution is to use WordPress to create a business website and have a blog sitting within your website. This gives you the greatest flexibility in terms of content. It is also highly recommended to help your search engine optimisation activities as Google likes blogs Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

19 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 19 Domain Names & Web Hosting When you are setting up a self-hosted version of WordPress there are two things you need to think about. Purchasing a domain name and purchasing web hosting. Think about your Domain Name The domain name also called the URL is the address of your website. So for Microsoft they have a domain name using the word Microsoft and therefore the URL would be You should give a fair amount of thought to the domain name you are going to use for your particular website. You should carefully research your domain name to see what is most beneficial from a search engine optimisation point of view. For instance if you run a plumbing company in Perth then if available an ideal domain name would be something like PlumbersPerth.com.au unfortunately it is more than likely that this particular domain name will already have been registered and by and large they are given out on a first-come first-served basis. So what you can do is decide to sort out the words you want to use within your domain name and then see what variants of that are available so that for instance in the example given we could have reversed the position of the words Plumbers and Perth and this would be equally good. Domain Names and SEO It is important to realise that one of the factors that Google takes into account when deciding how to rank your pages within the search engine results is the words contained within the domain name. So for instance if you used a domain name such as Dave427.com.au then Google would have no information from the domain name as to what service you are offering. If on the other hand your domain name contains a word or phrase relating to your product or service along with a local locations such as Perth or Joondalup then Google has a lot more to go on. In some cases simply using the right domain name can make a tremendous difference to your search engine ranking results. However it is important to realise that these days search engine optimisation does not involve one single action but rather a combination of what is called on-site and off-site SEO which when used correctly will help to put you in front of your competitors. Register variants of your website domain Something else you may like to consider is to decide on the domain you actually use for your website and then in addition you can register variants of that website domain name. For instance, using the example of PlumbersPerth.com.au if available you could register this and you can also register PerthPlumbers.com.au which will prevent your competitors from registering that name. Don t make the mistake of setting up lots of different websites all with the same content using a range of different domain names. This amounts to spam and Google is on the lookout for this sort of activity. If you are going to register alternative domain names purely so that your competitors cannot register those domains then you can simply register the domain and not actually have a website on it or providing you don t overdo it you can have those other domains active but simply pointing to your one single website Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

20 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 20 Consider International versions of your domain name Something else you may like to consider especially if you are interested in international business is registering different types of domain name. For instance most companies in Australia would use the.com.au type a domain name and there is nothing to stop you registering the.co.uk and the.com versions of the domain name to again protect these from use by your competitors. Remember that your domain name needs to be periodically renewed Finally you should realise that when you purchase a domain name it is not a one-off purchase and needs to be renewed either each year or in some cases every two years. If you forget to reregister you will have a short grace period after which the domain name will be available to all, including your competitors, so it is vitally important that if you receive an telling you that your domain needs reregistering that you take action immediately, otherwise you may find that your website suddenly stops working. Many domain name companies offer a facility called auto renewal which basically means that if you pay by credit card at the end of the one or two-year period they will automatically deduct an amount from your credit card and renew your domain name. This is the safest way of doing things as you do not have the responsibility of manually renewing your domain name. However if you change your credit card number this will not work, so if you do change credit card numbers make sure you update the credit card number with your domain name company. Domain names Consider longer registration periods If you do not like the idea of letting a company automatically take money from your credit card every 1 or 2 years an alternative in some cases is to register for a longer period. Some companies will offer you a discount for registering multiple years in advance and this is something you might like to consider Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

21 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 21 Planning your WordPress site A lot of people when they are creating a WordPress website, fire up WordPress and jump straight in and then just make content as they go. This is the wrong way to do things. Think about your content prior to creating pages Before you even open up WordPress what you should do is get a big empty sheet of paper and start thinking about your content. Think about what you want to say and how you are going to say it. Try and envisage your website content and structure before actually creating any posts or pages. Then start organising your content into pages. So typically you might have your Homepage, an About Us page, a FAQs page, a Prices Page and so on. Once you have grouped the content into a logical page structure the next thing you need to think about is your graphics. Start collecting the graphics you are going to use, in some cases creating new graphics from scratch that will illustrate the content displayed on your website. Map out your page content prior to creating your website Next map out a logical structure for your website, what I mean by this is that once you have your pages mapped out including content and graphics, think about how those pages can be organised in terms of a menu system. Most websites have a menu system across the top of the page and this menu system in turn has submenus drop-down menus so again think of this in advance before you start just haphazardly creating menus so that you end up with a system that is designed before you start implementing it. For instance if you had an item in the main menu called about us, as submenus underneath this menu you could have other items such as FAQs, testimonials and maybe recent news about events or product launches you have held. Consider creating website content within a Microsoft Word document When creating detailed content I would recommend that you create this within a Microsoft Word document and within the document you can have headers such as home page, about us, contact us etc. If you create your detailed content in Microsoft Word and review it in Microsoft Word this means you pay attention to the content rather than worrying about the format and the fact you are creating information within the WordPress software. Once you have proofed the information and checked it for simple spelling and grammatical errors at that point you can open up WordPress create your pages and upload content to the relevant pages Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

22 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 22 Installing WordPress Default web hosting pages Once you have set up your web hosting for a new website you will generally see a page something like that illustrated below. The content you can see is basically default content that has been set up by your web hosting company and this will be initially displayed when you type the web address into the browser. This default page created by the web hosting page essentially confirms at the web hosting has been set up and is now available for you to upload your content to. Using the cpanel to install WordPress Many website hosting companies now have something called the cpanel as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

23 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 23 In order to display the cpanel you would have to read the documentation supplied by your web hosting company and they would tell you to go to a particular web address and then supply a username and password in order to display the cpanel information. Within the cpanel if you scroll down you will find all the items that you need to set up so for instance in the example shown below you could click on the button called accounts in order to set up an system based on your particular website. If you scroll down the items in the cpanel you will find the WordPress script as illustrated below. If you click on the WordPress icon you will see a screen similar to the one illustrated below. This basically gives you information about the version of WordPress you will be installing Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

24 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 24 In this particular case to start the install process all you need to do is to click on the Install button as illustrated below. You will see a screen displayed with the sort of information illustrated below, in most cases you can simply accept the defaults. If you do make changes make absolutely sure you know what you are doing Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

25 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 25 Notice in the screenshot above that by default WordPress will be installed into the root directory of your web server. If you already had a website installed and you are maintaining this using software such as Dreamweaver you might wish to retain your original website but install WordPress into a subfolder and use WordPress as a blog in which case you could enter the relevant information into the directory section of the dialog box. In most cases however what people do is they set up a website based entirely on WordPress so you d use the default setting by just leaving the directory entry blank. The screenshot below shows the site settings that you can customise. As you can see, by default the username is Admin and the password is Pass. Customise your login and password You should take this opportunity to change both the username and password to something that is unique and secure. You should use a long password using a mixture of letters and numbers and once you have entered this you should write this down and keep this information in a secure location. On no account should you use the default username and password because if you do this you make it very easy for people to hack into your website and take control of your website Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

26 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 26 Once you have made any changes as required simply click on the Install button in this case displayed towards the bottom of the page. Once the installation is completed you should see a page similar to that illustrated below. This indicates that WordPress has been successfully installed and is now ready to use Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

27 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 27 Instant WordPress What is Instant WordPress? There are a lot of great things about WordPress but one of the major disadvantages is that if you are creating a WordPress site on your self-hosted website, when you create new pages and publish them they are immediately live and can be seen by anyone visiting your website. So if you are still learning how to use WordPress it would be nice to have a system where you can experiment with creating pages and posts and seeing what happens when you publish these without everyone seeing these on a live website. The solution to this problem is something called instant WordPress. Before we go any further it is important to stress that instant WordPress is not the same thing as WordPress. Instant WordPress allows you to create a local version of WordPress which you can run from your hard disk or even run from a memory stick which has the advantage that if you are learning how to use WordPress or maybe developing a site that you intend to use, then you can basically do what you want and it will all remain private on your local disk. If you read the documentation supplied with instant WordPress you will see they describe it as a development tool. This means that you can try out things in instant WordPress which you may want to use on your real version of WordPress but you do not have the worry that if something goes wrong you will have destroyed the real version of WordPress that is used to host your website. It is possible to use instant WordPress to learn how to get the best from the application and then develop a local copy of your website and then upload it to the real website however it is quite complicated to do this and should only be attempted if you have good technical skills. If on the other hand you simply want to install instant WordPress on your local disk purely to experiment and to learn how to use WordPress then this is an ideal piece of software and the really good news is that it is free. If you go to Google and search using the phrase instant WordPress you will see the instant WordPress website displayed and you will also see alternative download sites such as the CNET website Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

28 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 28 As a matter of habit, I tend to download third-party applications via CNET as their website has a reputation for checking downloads against viruses and various forms of malware. As you can see below you can read a description about this software and then simply click on the download link and follow the instructions to install the instant WordPress program to your local disk Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

29 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 29 Depending on the version of Windows that you are using once the file has been downloaded you should be able to view the download as illustrated below. In this case you can then click on the Run button to actually install the program. Follow through any prompts that may be displayed and install the program. Once the program has been installed open up the Windows Explorer program and navigate to the folder containing the program you have just downloaded and installed. In the example shown below you can see I have actually downloaded and installed the program to a thumb drive in this case called Drive E. Incidentally if you want to install to a thumb drive make sure that you use a large enough thumb drive to accommodate the downloaded file, the install file plus the data including the graphics that will make up your development website. If you go and look at the files that have actually been installed you will see the application file displayed as illustrated below which is called InstantWP.exe Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

30 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 30 Double-click on the InstantWP.exe file to run it and you ll see the program open up as illustrated below. One last reminder, please remember that instant WordPress is primarily designed to be a development tool for developing websites and remember that it is actually quite difficult to create a website in instant WordPress And Then Copy It to the real version of WordPress. Try and treat instant WordPress as purely a learning tool for the time being. If you do want to create your website in instant WordPress with a view to transferring it up to your real version of WordPress, if you check out the documentation available within WordPress you will find that for around about 25 bucks the people who created WordPress will send you detailed instructions of how to transfer an instant WordPress website to your real WordPress website. To start the local copy of WordPress within the instant WordPress program simply click on the button called WordPress Admin. At this point the program looks just like real WordPress will when you enter the Log In area, as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

31 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 31 The default username will be Admin. The default password will be either Pass or Password. Once you have entered these details, click on the Log In button. The admin dashboard will then be displayed as illustrated below. This is almost exactly the same as what you would see if you are using a real version of WordPress. If you look at the menu structure on the left you will see exactly the same sort of menu as you would do with the real WordPress program Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

32 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 32 Notice that the instant WordPress installation also creates a whole load of sample pages and posts that you can experiment with as illustrated below. Remember that you can modify these as you see fit and it will allow you to learn how to use WordPress without worrying about messing up a real website. Always 2016 Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

33 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 33 remember that you can simply reinstall instant WordPress if you have totally messed it up and start again. It is after all described as a WordPress development tool. During this course you may wish to download and install a copy of instant WordPress as it will allow you to follow along without the need to set up a website at all, you can learn how to use WordPress at minimum cost and once you are happy then go ahead and organise your domain name and web hosting at which point you know what you re doing and you can plan, design and implement a professional business website for your company Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

34 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 34 A first look at WordPress When you first install WordPress the illustration below shows the typical opening screen that you are going to see. The screenshot above shows a typical installation, WordPress as it appears straight out of the box with no customisation and no original content. As you can see at the moment WordPress is not particularly interesting to look at and there is a lot of improvement needed if you re going to use WordPress to create your business website. As you can see there is some basic information displayed in the main body section of the screen, there is a header area displaying brief details about the website and down the right-hand side there are a series of links. During this course you will learn how to take this basic screen and customise it so that it is suited for your particular business and you will end up with an attractive business website that will reflect positively on your particular company. At the moment this website looks like a rather boring blog page because that it is exactly what it is. Always remember primarily WordPress out-of-the-box is designed for people to produce blogs rather than websites. As you will see with a few additions and a little customisation you can make WordPress look like a website rather than a blog Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

35 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 35 Public vs. Admin WordPress views The first thing you should realise when using WordPress is that there are two different aspects to WordPress. There is the aspect illustrated in the screenshot above which shows the blog or website as a visitor to the site would see it. There is also a behind-the-scenes aspect which is called the administration area which allows you to make changes to the content and to the look and feel of the site. Obviously to prevent anyone making changes to your website access to this behind the scenes area is restricted and you will need to know how to log onto this area and how to supply your username and password to access the administration area. In order to display the public view of the site you simply need to type in the website address also known as a URL into the address bar of your Internet browser. So if your website was called you type this into the web address of the browser and in this case you would see the screenshot displayed above. Once the default version of your WordPress site is displayed if you look down the right-hand side of the links you will see a section called Meta. Within this there is a link called Log In. If you click on the Login link you will then see the WordPress login page as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

36 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 36 In order to access the administration area, simply type in your Username and Password and then click on the Log In button. After a short delay you should see the dashboard area of the admin section being displayed as illustrated below. The very first time you install WordPress the dashboard will display a panel called Welcome to WordPress. This is designed to guide you through the process of creating pages and posts and learning how to use WordPress Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

37 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 37 So at this point if you want to learn more about WordPress you could click on the big button entitled Customise Your Site and follow the instructions or you could investigate some of the options listed. In this case we will ignore The Welcome to WordPress section. To make this welcome screen go away simply click on the dismiss link displayed at the top right of the welcome panel. The dashboard will now look as illustrated below. If you look over at the left-hand section of the screen you will see a series of menu options displayed as illustrated Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

38 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 38 You can use this menu system to add new posts or pages, as well as editing or deleting existing pages or posts and as you can see there are also other sections such as Media which allows you to upload and manage pictures within your website. Other items on the menu are things like appearance which as the name would suggest allows you to control the appearance of the website, this can also be used with the options within the settings item to determine how your website is going to look and act. If you look carefully there is another item called plugins and as we will see later this allows you to extend the functionality of WordPress by adding what are called plugins to the basic system and these can do anything from allowing you to install a backup routine to back up your website through to a plugin that will improve your search engine optimisation techniques used within the website. If you look carefully at the menu there is also an item called updates which allows you to update to the latest version of WordPress. There is another menu system displayed across the top of the WordPress screen as illustrated below. This top menu allows you to access quick shortcuts to achieve particular actions within WordPress. For instance if you move the mouse over the word new within this top menu you will see the following drop-down displayed Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

39 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 39 This will allow you to easily create a new post, a new page or to install new media i.e. pictures or video into your WordPress website. If we look again at the menu displayed down the left-hand side of the screen you will see that when you click on any of these items there is generally a submenu of items as illustrated below. So in the case illustrated above, move the mouse pointer to where it says Posts, you could click on All Posts to view all your posts or you could click on add new to add a new post. You will see there are also items called categories and tags, we shall talk more about these later. The illustration below shows you the submenu options under the Appearance item Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

40 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 40 At the moment you do not need to dwell on what exactly all these options do, you just need to get an idea of how to start driving WordPress and how to access the various items you will need to create pages and posts later within this course. If you look more closely within the dashboard section you will see information summarising the contents of your website, so for instance, if you look at the illustration below you can see that currently we have one post, one page, one category and no tags. In the discussion section you can see we have one comment and one comment has been approved. We have no pending comments and apparently we have zero spam. Additional information in this section relates to the theme, so in this case it is telling you that you are using the 2012 theme and that you have six widgets installed. It is also telling you what version of WordPress you are using so the example illustrated below is using WordPress In the right-hand side of the dashboard you will see other items such as the Quick Press section, which as the name implies, allows you to quickly create and publish content to your website. You may have noticed within WordPress there are lots of different ways of achieving the same result. So for instance if you wanted to create a new post, you can use the menu system at the side, you could use the menu system at the top or you could use the quick post section. This is a bit like using bits of word where let s say you wanted to select some text to make it bold, there are numerous ways you can achieve this. It doesn t matter which way you decide to do things in WordPress you just need to know how to use the program in a manner that suits you. Within the dashboard if you look at the left-hand section, move the mouse to where it says posts and then move to the item in the submenu called All Posts Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

41 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 41 If you then click on the All Posts link you will see details of all posts that have been created so far. If you are using a freshly installed version of WordPress by default a single sample post will have been created automatically for you, as illustrated below. As you can see the sample post is called Hello World. If you click on the link to the post called Hello World this will open up the post so that you can view it. Incidentally you may have noticed that you can create pages or posts and you may be wondering, what is the difference. For the time being we don t really need to worry about this, basically you will create pages that contain information that is relatively static and doesn t change much over time. For instance pages generally will include items such as a home page, an about us page, a contact page and also pages containing details about your products, services or prices Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

42 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 42 Posts on the other hand are generally used for items that may have a short shelf life such a special offers or maybe posts containing announcements or news. In many cases you may create a website for your business which contains multiple pages and you may not have any posts at all. If on the other hand, you are interested in creating a blog within your website then this is a way you will use posts as part of your blog. Remember that you are currently in the backend or administration view of WordPress. If you look carefully you will see a button called View Post and clicking on this will allow you to view the post as a visitor would see it rather than viewing it from the administration point of view. Over to the right of the screen there is also a button called Preview Changes. As the name suggests clicking on this button will allow you to preview any changes you have made to your page or post. Another important button to be aware of is displayed over to the right of the screen and is simply called Update. If you had made changes to a page or post and wish these to appear live on your web you would need to click on this Update button to publish them to the public version of your web so that your viewers could read the updated information Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

43 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 43 In this case click on the View Post button, as illustrated below. You will then see the contents of the page or post as the visitor to your website would see them as illustrated below. In order to return to the administration or backend view a WordPress you would need to click on the Back button within your browser to return to the previous page Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

44 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 44 In this section you had a quick look at what WordPress looks like behind the scenes by investigating some of the options in the administration area. It is worthwhile taking some time to investigate the options available and just familiarising yourself with the way that things are done within WordPress. In the next section we can start creating new content and then we will format that content and publish it within WordPress. Log out of WordPress and close your browser Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

45 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 45 Creating pages In this section we are going to start looking at how to create new pages within your WordPress website. We will also see how to format the text within your pages. Logging in to WordPress The first thing you need to do is to bring up the website and login by clicking on the Log in link within the Meta section which is displayed down the right-hand side of the web page. The WordPress login screen will then be displayed as illustrated. Enter your Username and Password. Creating a new page The easiest way to create a new page is to click on the New item displayed in the toolbar across the top of the page, and from the submenu displayed, click on Page Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

46 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 46 After a short delay the Add New Page screen is displayed. Entering a page title Within the section entitled Enter Title Here you could click and enter a title for this page. In the same way you could click within the body area of the page and enter the text directly into the page. In order to save you typing all this information we have prepared the information that is required in a Microsoft Word document. To access this document, open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the DVD drive. Navigate to a sub-folder called WordPress Sample Files and if you look inside that folder you will a document called Sample Text. Open this document. Within the Word document, select the first line of text. Press Ctrl+C to copy the selected area into the clipboard. Switch back to WordPress and paste the selected text into the Title area by clicking in the Title area and pressing Ctrl+V as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

47 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 47 Entering body text for a page Switch back to the Microsoft Word document and select all the text immediately below this title Once selected press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text. Switch back to WordPress. Pasting text from a Microsoft Word document At this point you could simply click within the body area of the document and press Ctrl+V, however a better way to do it is to click within the body area and then click on the icon in the WordPress toolbar containing the W. NOTE: If you cannot see an icon containing the W within the WordPress toolbar, click on the icon at the extreme right end of the WordPress toolbar, which is called Show or hide The Kitchen Sink and this will then display a second line of icons within the Toolbar Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

48 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 48 After clicking on the Paste from Word icon, the paste from word dialog box will be displayed. Click within this dialog box and press Ctrl+V. The dialog box will then display the pasted data as illustrated below. Click on the Insert button to insert the pasted data into your WordPress page Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

49 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 49 Note: The advantage of using the Paste from Word facility is that what is pasted into WordPress is just what s needed with all the extra formatting embedded within a word document stripped out. Sometimes pasting information from word documents directly into a WordPress page or post can cause formatting problems. Sometimes when you import text from a Microsoft Word document you end up with extra spaces when you paste information into WordPress. Scroll up and down the document to see if your document contains any extra spaces and if so, use the normal formatting techniques to get rid of the extra spaces. Also if you scroll down to the end of the text, press the enter key a few times just to give you a little bit of space at the end of the document. The Publish Panel If you look to the right of the WordPress window you will see a panel called Publish which contains some very important buttons Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

50 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 50 SAVE DRAFT: The save draft button allows you to save the document as a draft which will remain private and not be viewable by people visiting your website. This is useful when you want to start writing a long document and then take a break and maybe finish it off tomorrow. PREVIEW: The preview button allows you to preview the document as a visitor to your website would see it. It does not publish a live version so by clicking on the preview button visitors to your website will not see any of the changes you have made to a document. Normally when you click on the preview button a second window or tab will automatically open up within your browser which is useful as you can then easily switch between the preview version of your website (as your visitors will see it) and then easily switch back to the admin area so you can continue making changes to a document. PUBLISH: When you click on the Publish button, as the name implies, this will publish the document so that it can be seen by anyone visiting your website. You should only publish documents that are finished and ready for viewing by your visitors. If you are working on a document that is work in progress, you should always save as a draft. In this case click on the Save Draft button. Remember this does not publish a document it simply saves the document as a draft. Previewing a Page Click on the Preview button and your screen will resemble the illustration below and you can see that your title and body text is displayed along with a header area and the widget area is displayed down the right-hand side of the screen. Remember this is how visitors to your website will see your newly created page Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

51 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 51 Remember that clicking on the Preview Changes button will show a preview screen in a new tab. If you click back on the first tab you will return to the admin area within WordPress. Bold text formatting Drag across the first paragraph of text while holding the mouse button down and this will select the first paragraph of text. Within the WordPress toolbar, click on the Bold icon and just like when you re using Microsoft Word, the selected text will now be displayed in bold. Italic text formatting With the text still selected click on the Italics icon and this will apply italic formatting to the selected text. Text Alignment formatting Click within the first paragraph and then click on the line Centre icon. This will align the paragraph to the centre. Click on the Align Right icon which will align the paragraph to the right. Click on the Align Left icon to realign the text to the left. If you take a quick look at some of the other icons within the Toolbar you will see that they are very familiar, if you are used to using something like Microsoft Word. Bullet and numbered list formatting Clicking on the Unordered List icon will produce a bulleted list of items. Clicking on the Ordered List will produce a numbered list. Text indenting There is an Indent icon There is also an Undo icon. Text colour formatting You can change the colour of selected text. To do this, select a portion of text as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

52 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 52 Then click on the down arrow and majorly to the right of the Select Text Colour icon you will see a drop-down displayed in which you can select the font colour. In this case select the Red colour. If necessary scroll down the document and select a line of text called: how safe are your data backups? Heading Formatting We can now apply heading formatting to this line of text. To do this, you would use the same formatting techniques as you would in Microsoft Word. Click on the down arrow next to the word Paragraph within the toolbar. This will display a drop-down list of heading styles you can select from. In this case select the Heading 2 style Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

53 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 53 You will see that immediately different formatting is applied to any text to which you have applied the Heading 2 style. Heading formatting and SEO NOTE: Marking text with different heading styles is important in terms of search engine optimisation for your webpages. Google will pay particular attention to any text that is marked with a heading style. You should always try to incorporate your important keyword phrases into heading text as this will help promote the web page within the search engine results. We will see more about this later in a section dealing with search engine optimisation. Scroll down your document until you can see the line illustrated below. Drag across this line of text to select it and then click on the down arrow within the heading section and apply Heading 3 formatting to this line of text 2016 Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

54 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 54 Themes and Headings Incidentally you may be wondering why I used Heading 2 and Heading 3 formatting, rather than using Heading 1 and Heading 2 formatting. The reason for this is that many themes automatically assign Heading 1 formatting to the title used for your page or post. From a technical point of view any individual paste or post should only have one item marked as a Heading 1. If you have multiple instances of text all marked as heading one some search engines may regard this as an attempt to spam the search engine results. You can have as many lower-level headings as you want so for instance there is nothing wrong with having a single document containing 3 or 4 items marked using Heading 2 formatting. So just to emphasise the point, remember that text marked with a heading format is important in relation to your search engine optimisation and you should always use your keyword phrases within headings. Many websites will have a phrase such as More Information about us, which visually may look okay but from a SEO point of view adds no value to the promotion of your web page. Block Quote formatting Apart from simply indenting a paragraph, you can select some text as illustrated below and you can then use block quote formatting. To format the selected text using block quote formatting simply click on the Block Quote icon within the toolbar. Depending on the theme that you re using the Block quote will indent the selected text and in many cases will also apply highlighting colour to the indent of the paragraph. So far you have applied various formatting techniques to the document so now is a good time to preview the changes. To do this, click on the Preview button displayed over to the right of the screen Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

55 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 55 This will display a view of your website as a visitor to your website would see it. Remember when you click on the Preview button, a new tab is opened within your browser. As you can see from the illustration below, you can see the effects of the various applied formatting. Return to the administration side of WordPress by clicking on the first tab displayed within your browser window. Distraction Free Writing Mode You can now examine some the other items in the WordPress toolbar. Move the mouse to the item illustrated below, which is called Distraction Free Writing Mode Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

56 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 56 Your screen will now look like the illustration below. As you can see it is distraction free in the sense that all you see is the actual content so you don t have to worry about the various formatting buttons or controls, you just worry about producing content. When you want to exit from this distraction free mode simply move your mouse pointer over the text and you will see a WordPress menu displayed across the top of the screen Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

57 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 57 Click on the Exit Full-Screen link, and your screen will look as normal. Using Paste as Plain Text There is another button within the toolbar called Paste as Plain Text. This can be useful when you want to copy information from a document which may contain extra formatting information such as tables or maybe a picture and you simply want to insert the text into your WordPress document. You should always avoid copying text from documents such as a Microsoft Word document and then pasting directly into your posts or pages. The reason for this is that often extra formatting codes will be embedded within WordPress and this can cause issues later on. Remove formatting icon Another icon you may find useful is the remove formatting icon. The way you use this is that if you select some text that has already been formatted and you want to remove any formatting simply click on this icon after you have selected the text. After which all formatting will be removed To see the effect of this icon select the text within your document to which you applied red formatting. Then click on the remove formatting icon and the red formatting will be removed. Insert custom character icon Scroll down to the bottom of your document and click at the end of the document Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

58 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 58 Then click on the Insert Custom Character icon within the toolbar. Once you ve clicked on this icon you will see a dialog box displayed containing many different types of custom characters that you won t necessarily have access to from your keyboard. So for instance if your keyboard didn t have a currency key for the euro or the English you could select this within the box to insert the character. In this case select the copyright symbol as illustrated below. As you can see below the copyright symbol will be inserted for you. You could then insert a space and type in this year s date. Once you have finished editing the content and adding formatting to a page you should first preview it by clicking on the preview button to make sure it s okay and then you need to publish it so it can be seen by visitors to your website. Over to the right of the screen there is a Publish button as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

59 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 59 After clicking on the Publish button the page is now live on your website. Using the View Page Once you have published a page click on the View Page icon above the WordPress toolbar and you can see the page exactly as a visitor to your website would see it. Notice that unlike using the Preview Changes button (which opens in a new tab) when you click on the view page icon the website page is displayed in the same window. In order to return to the previous page you would now have to use the back button in your Internet browser. Click on the Back button to return to the previous page. Remember at any point you can always make changes to pages that have been previously published. For instance in this case select the first line of text and then click on the down arrow next to the colour icon in the toolbar and apply green formatting to the first line Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

60 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 60 Try applying purple colouring to the second paragraph to which we applied block quote formatting and as you can see you can do this without any problems. So far you have seen how to insert text into a page and also how to format it. As you will have realised, creating and formatting the text in WordPress is very similar to the way you would do it in something like Microsoft Word. Text vs. Visual tabs Now for something a little bit different. Over to the right you will see two tabs one called Visual and the other one called Text. By default the Visual tab is selected. Click on the Text tab and what you will see is not the visual effect of what you ve typed in but the underlying HTML code that is used to create your web page. Your screen will now look something like this. Most of the time you don t have to worry about the underlying HTML code. However there are occasions where you may want to access this view of the website so that you can insert a specific HTML code into a document. We will see examples of this later in the course. Click on the Visual tab to view the page as you would normally see it within WordPress. Click on the Update button if you have made any changes Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

61 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 61 Viewing pages using All Pages Within the menu displayed down the left side of the WordPress screen click on Pages and from the submenu displayed click on All Pages. Your screen will now look like the illustration below. Option to edit a page Edit, Quick Edit, Trash and View If you move the mouse pointer over the page called Data Off-Site Backup Company in Perth, WA you will see a number of links displayed directly beneath the page. The editing options include: 2016 Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

62 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 62 EDIT If you were to click on the Edit option you could edit the page. QUICK EDIT If you were to click on the Quick Edit option, this will display a screen for doing quick edits relating to the page. TRASH If you were to click on the trash link this will delete the page. VIEW This will allow you to view the page. Remember that in most cases if you want to simply edit the page you would click on the page itself which would then open up within WordPress. Deleting a page In this case click on the trash option as illustrated below. As you can see you no longer have any pages displayed as illustrated below. If you look carefully at the screen however you will see a message towards the top of the screen telling you the item has been moved to the Trash Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

63 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 63 Restoring a deleted page from the trash bin If you click on the Undo link you will find that this undoes the deletion and once again your pages displayed as illustrated below. So as you can see always remember if you accidentally delete the page or post it is actually moved to the trash area and you can undo the deletion or failing that click on the trash link towards the top of the page from which you will be able to recover any files you have previously deleted. Quick Edit Move the mouse pointer over your page and then click on the Quick Edit link displayed immediately below the page Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

64 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 64 This will display the Quick Edit screen as illustrated below. The quick edit facility can be useful if you have a lot of pages as opposed to just one which we have in this case. There are a lot of things you can change quickly using Quick Edit. Many of these we have already seen, so you just need to remember that you have this facility to change items such as titles and slugs. Over to the right you will see a facility for not allowing comments and also for controlling the template that is used by the particular page. For now we won t change any of these but just remember that this facility exists and you will find it useful when you start using WordPress for real. So far you have just created one page. What we will do now is to create some more pages so you have some pages to play with on this course and you will see how incredibly easy it is to produce your pages. First if necessary reopen the word document containing your sample data for your pages which is located in a file called Sample Text contained on the DVD drive within the folder called WordPress Sample Files. Select the line headed Products/Services as illustrated below. Then press Ctrl+C to copy this line of information into the clipboard. Switch back to your WordPress screen. Within the menu displayed down the left side of the WordPress screen click on Pages and from the submenu displayed click on Add New Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

65 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 65 Once the Add New Page is displayed click within the title area and press Ctrl+V to paste the title from the clipboard. Switch back to Microsoft Word document and select the body text for the Products/Services page. Once the text is selected, press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text to the Clipboard. Switch back to WordPress. Within WordPress, click on the Paste from Word icon within the toolbar. Once the Paste from Word dialog box is displayed click within it and press Ctrl+V to paste the selected text into the dialog box Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

66 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 66 Then click on the Insert button within the dialog box to insert the text into the body of your page. If necessary remove any extra spacing from the text within WordPress. Finally click on the Publish button over to the right to publish this page. Repeat this process to create more pages, detailed below. You will find the necessary text for the headers and body text within your word document to create these. In each case if necessary take out any extra spacing and always remember to finish by clicking on the Publish button for each page. About Us Pricing and Ordering FAQs Reseller Opportunities Terms & Conditions Why Use Us? Contact Us Once you have created these new Pages within the menu displayed down the left side of the page click on pages and then from the submenu click on All Pages. You will now see a list of all the pages you have just created Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

67 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 67 As you can see you have very quickly created the typical Pages you would find on a business website. Click on any one of these pages to open a page within WordPress. Click on the Preview Changes button which is displayed to the right of the page. Default menu creation by WordPress If you look carefully at the screen you will see that WordPress has automatically created a menu for you displayed across the top of the screen Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

68 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 68 Try clicking on each item within this menu and you will be automatically transferred to the relevant page. At the moment this menu looks a bit messy because we need to customise and format it so that it will be displayed on a single line, rather than spread over two lines. We will also see how to use shorter labels in the menu in a later chapter Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

69 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 69 Advanced Page Options So far we have simply created a number of pages for our website and as you saw WordPress automatically entered these pages into the menu displayed across the top of the page. If necessary display the dashboard within WordPress and within the menu running down the left side of the screen click on Pages and then from the menu click on All Pages. Specifying a Home Page You will see a list of all your pages displayed. Now we have to actually specify which page we want to use as a home page for your website and we need to start thinking about this now. In this particular case we want to specify that the page called Data off-site backup company in Perth, W.A. is going to be set as a home page, which currently it is not. What makes the homepage special is that this will be the first page that opens up within your website. What I mean by this is that if someone in Sydney types in your URL using the base address such as then the homepage is the page that will be displayed. Click on the page called Data off-site backup company in Perth, W.A. to open it Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

70 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 70 Once the page is displayed click on the Preview Changes button displayed over to the right. The page will then be displayed and you should see a menu displayed across the top of the screen. Notice that the page you are just looking at is displayed within the menu but there is another item which is labelled Home also displayed at the beginning of the menu. Click on the item called Home within the menu. As you can see when you click on the Home link what you see is the page illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

71 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 71 The reason you are seeing this page is that this is a sample page which was created for you by WordPress when you first install WordPress. By default this is set up to be your home page. So what we now need to do is to tell WordPress not to use this page but to use the other page you were previously looking at. Switch back to the WordPress administration area. Within the menu displayed down the left side of the page click on Settings and from the submenu displayed click on Reading. The Reading Settings screen will be displayed as illustrated. If you look at the section called Front Page Displays you will see currently the button called Your Latest Posts is selected. This setting is fine if you re simply creating a blog but we re more interested in creating a website rather than a blog. Click on the button next to where it says a Static Page. Then click on the down arrow next to the item called Front Page. This will display a list of your pages from which you can select the page that you wish to set as your home page for the website. In this case select the page called Data off-site backup company in Perth, W.A Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

72 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 72 Make sure you click on the Save Changes button underneath the various options as illustrated below. To review your changes click on the Pages button in the menu down the left-hand side of the screen and from the submenu click on All Pages. Click on one of the pages to open it. Click on the Preview Changes button to preview the changes, and initially nothing looks to have changed. However if you now click on the Home link you will see the home page you actually intend to use for this website Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

73 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 73 So you have now seen how to set your home page for the website. There are various other things you can change that relate to pages. If necessary return to the admin side of your WordPress system, within the menu displayed down the left-hand side click on Pages and from the submenu displayed click on All Pages. Open up the page that you previously set as your home page. Change the template used by the Home Page The homepage that you have set is using the default template supplied by this particular WordPress theme. If you look over to the right of the screen you will see a section called Page Attributes as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

74 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 74 There are various page attributes you can change but in this case we will concentrate on the template. As you can see from the illustration above in this case the default template is being used. To use a different template click on the down arrow to the right of this item and you will see alternatives displayed as illustrated below. In this case click the Front Page Template item. Click on the Update button to update your changes. Click on the Preview Changes button so you can see the effect of your changes Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

75 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 75 Your home page now looks like this. Some templates do not display the widget area down the right side of the page If you look carefully, the widget area down the right-hand side is no longer displayed on the homepage. Try clicking on the about us link and you will see that page does display a widget area down the right-hand side of the screen. Try clicking on all the other links and you ll see they all display the widget area displayed down the righthand side apart from the homepage and the reason for this is the home page is using a different template from all the other pages. The layout of the home page is called a full width page. You can, at a later date change your mind and reset the template back to the default template, which in this case would display a widget area down the right side of the homepage. In later sections we shall see how to install different WordPress themes and many of these themes offer far more advanced options when it comes to applying different templates to different pages Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

76 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 76 Images and WordPress If your WordPress window is still open close the WordPress window. Open your web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and type the URL of your website into the web browser. Your website will appear something like the illustration below. Logging in without using the Log in link in the Meta widget section If you remember we previously used a different template for the home page which you are viewing. If you scroll up and down the homepage you will see that because there is no widget area displayed to the right, there is no Meta section within the widget area allowing you to login using the Login link. Click on the Pricing and Ordering link within the menu you will see the widget area displayed to the right, as we originally had on all your pages Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

77 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 77 If you scroll down you should find that the widget area in the right includes the Meta section which allows you to click on the Login link as illustrated below. Don t actually click on this link at the moment. Click on the homepage again so that the home page is displayed. We have already established this page does not have a login link. So the question is if you don t have a login link how can you login to WordPress. The answer is very simple and you need to know how to do this because later on we will remove the login links from the widget area. In this case we have a website and the URL is In order to access the login page for this particular website you would type the following into the address bar within your web browser Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

78 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 78 As illustrated below. Obviously in your case you would type in the URL of your particular website followed by the /wp-admin. Once you have done this and press the Enter key you will see the WordPress login as illustrated below. Most people when they are customising the look and feel of their WordPress-based website will remove the Meta section from the widget area. It just looks neater this way and as you have just seen there are alternative ways of accessing your WordPress login screen. Once the login screen is displayed type in your Username and Password and then click on the Log in button Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

79 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 79 The WordPress dashboard screen will then be displayed as normal. In this section we are going to look at how to upload images and use them within your WordPress pages and posts. Adding new media - Pictures Within the menu displayed down the left-hand side of the WordPress screen click on Media and from the submenu click on Add New Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

80 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 80 Uploading images The Upload New Media screen is displayed as illustrated below. Click on the Select Files button to allow you to select files on your hard disk and upload them to your WordPress site. A dialog box is displayed and you need to use this to navigate to the folder containing your image files, as illustrated below. NOTE: To find these file navigate to the DVD drive. Navigate to a folder called WordPress Sample Files Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

81 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 81 Navigate to a sub-folder called WordPress Images. You then need to select the images you wish to upload. There are some tricks when selecting files. To select a single file simply click once on that file. To select all the files click on one file and then press Ctrl+A. To select multiple files one by one first press down the Shift key and while keeping the Shift key pressed click on the other files you to wish select. When you have selected all the files you need let go of the Shift key and you will see multiple files remain selected. To select a block of files click on the first item in the block you wish to select and while keeping the Ctrl pressed click on the last item in the block. When you release the Ctrl key a block of files will remain selected Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

82 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 82 In this case press Ctrl+A to select all the files and once they are selected click on the Open button at the bottom right of the dialog box. The files will then start uploading to your WordPress website, one at a time, and once they are all uploaded you will see the following. Editing Images If you look carefully you will see an Edit link next to each of the images. Try clicking on the edit link of the first image and you will see a screen allowing you to enter extra information about the image Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

83 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 83 Alternative Text for Images and SEO The important item is called Alternative Text. It is important to realise that if you are going to use images on your website that Google and the other search engines are unable to understand what each picture is about. The idea of alternative text is that you can tell Google and the other search engines what the picture is about. So for instance in this case within the alternative text area I could enter a short phrase, ideally packed with our important keywords telling Google what this picture was about. For the time being just close the screen down but do remember every time you upload an image you should always associate alternative text to that image for the benefit of Google. This will help your search engine optimisation efforts for your website. Inserting an image into a page The next thing we want to do now that we have uploaded these images is to open up one of our pages and insert an image into the page. Within the menu displayed down the left side of the WordPress screen click on Pages and from the submenu displayed click on All Pages. The list of your pages will be displayed. Click on the homepage which is called Data Off-Site Backup Company in Perth, WA Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

84 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 84 Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click within the document. Click on the Add Media button displayed directly above the WordPress toolbar. The Insert Media page will be displayed. Notice this contains two links one called Upload Files and the other one is called Media Library. If your pictures are not already displayed, then click on the Media Library link. This will display all the pictures you have uploaded so far. Click on the first picture to select it as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

85 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 85 Image Attachment Details Notice that over to the right you have a section called Attachment Details. Within the Attachment Details section you can set items such as a Title, Caption, Alternative Text and even a Description. You can also set Alignment and Link options. Normally you would at least insert some alternative text but in this case we will not add any information so just simply click on the Insert into Page button. You will now see your page with the picture inserted as illustrated below. Click on the Preview Changes button displayed over to the right of the screen. You will see the page displayed within your browser containing the picture at the bottom Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

86 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 86 Remember when you preview your changes like this the preview is displayed in a new tab within the browser so click on the original tab displayed at the top of your browser window to return to the WordPress editing page. Insert some extra space towards the top of the document and repeat this sequence to insert a different picture towards the top of the page. If you preview your changes you will now see the page has two images inserted into it. Switch back to the WordPress editing screen. Resizing images using drag and drop Click once on one of the pictures and you will see that the picture is surrounded by eight squares called handles Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

87 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 87 To resize this picture move the mouse to one of the corner handles them press the mouse button down and drag towards the centre of the picture or away from picture to resize the image. A disadvantage of using this drag-and-drop method to resize your pictures is that sometimes your pictures can end up distorted if you drag more in one direction than the other. Remember that if you mess up resizing picture you can always click on the undo button in the toolbar to reverse your changes. Using the Edit Image icon to edit an image When you click on an image within WordPress you will see two icons displayed within the image as illustrated below. The red icon will allow you to delete the image and the other icon will allow you to edit the image. Click on the Edit Image button Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

88 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 88 Resizing an image using percentage resizing This will display a dialog box allowing you to edit the image properties. You can use the size control to resize the image. Try clicking on the different percentages displayed and see what effect it has on the image. Try clicking on the 60% value and then click on the update button towards the bottom of the dialog box. This will close the dialog box and you will see a much smaller picture displayed within your page Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

89 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 89 Image Alignment options Click again on the picture and then click on the Edit Image icon within the picture. Take a look at the alignment options and try experimenting by clicking on the various alignment options which include left centre and right. Applying Alternative or Alt text to an image If necessary reopen the edit image dialog box and this time look at the Alternative Text section. As has already been mentioned the alternative text for an image is important in relation to your search engine optimisation. By default the alternative text will simply pick up the text from the file name. In this case delete the current alternative text and replace it with a phrase The Perth Backup Service. Remember that visitors to your website may not see the alternative text, but Google will. Applying a picture caption Another option that you can set is picture caption. This caption is displayed to your visitors and also can be read by Google. Don t make the mistake of using exactly the same phrase that you use to your alternative text use a similar but different phrase Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

90 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 90 Click on the Update button within the dialog box to close the dialog box. Then click on the Update button towards the right of the screen to update the page. Click on the Preview Changes button to the right of the screen. As you can see the picture is now displayed with a caption displayed directly underneath it. Adding a link to an image Switch back to WordPress so that you can see the page you are editing. Click on the picture once to select it. Then click on the Edit Image icon. If you look towards the bottom of the dialog box you will see there is a link URL section which allows you to link from the picture to somewhere else Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

91 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 91 Annoyingly, by default when you insert a picture into WordPress it links to its own graphics file. This has the effect that when a visitor views your WordPress pages and posts that contain images by default if they click on an image it will link to the image file behind the image and you will see purely the image displayed on the screen. Don t actually do it now but if you were to click on the Preview Changes button, and then click on the image within the page you would see the following. If you want to you can delete or modify the link behind the picture you will see there are two icons in the toolbar to allow you to do this. The first icon is called the Insert/Edit Link button while the second icon is the Delete Link button. Click on the Insert/Edit Link button and a dialog box will be displayed The URL section of the dialog box shows you the current link Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

92 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 92 Lower down in the dialog box there is an item that says Or Link to Existing Content. Click on this link and it will expand to show you a list of the pages that you have created. In order to link this picture to a particular page for instance the Why Use Us page you would select this page within the list and then click on the Update button at the bottom of the dialog box. At first nothing much seems to have changed. Click on the Update button to the right of the screen and then click on the Preview Changes button also to the right of the screen. If necessary scroll down so you can see the image, and when you move the mouse pointer over the image it will change to the shape of a small hand indicating there is a hyperlink behind the image. Try clicking on the image and in this case it will hyperlink to a page called Why Use Us which you specified in the Insert/Link Edit dialog box. As you have seen it is very easy to both insert images and also to link images to other pages within your website. Switch back to your WordPress editing page. Click once on the picture to select it, and then click on the Edit Image icon. Once the dialog box is displayed if you look at the top of the dialog box there are two tabs one called Edit Image and the other one called Advanced Settings. Click on the Advanced Settings tab. Specifying an exact image height and width size If you look at the Advanced Image Settings you have extra options. For instance you can specify the exact width and height of your picture Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

93 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 93 Specifying image border and spacing There are also other options you can change, so for instance you can set the image properties which include setting the border, vertical space and horizontal space. If you want no borders to be displayed around the image you can enter a 0 value in the Border area. Close WordPress Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

94 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 94 Linking pages & Posts In this section we are going to look at creating and modifying links. You can create links from one page to another and also you can create links between posts. You can create links to an external website and you can also create links to documents such as Microsoft Word documents and PDF documents. If necessary display the dashboard within WordPress. In the menu to the left click on the pages item and from the submenu displayed click on the All Pages link. Once a list of your pages is displayed open the Contact Us page. You will notice that the first line of text displays information which includes a hyperlink as illustrated below. Now if you remember you simply copied this information from the Microsoft Word document and then pasted it into your WordPress page. You will notice that WordPress automatically identified the as an address and automatically added a hyperlink to the address which in this case is info@example.com. You can tell that a hyperlink is present because within WordPress any text hyperlink is automatically formatted to display in blue and is also underlined. Removing a text hyperlink The first thing we ll do is to remove the hyperlink from the text displaying the address. Select the text containing the hyperlink and then within the WordPress toolbar click on the Unlink button as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

95 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 95 After clicking on the Unlink icon your text will look as illustrated below indicating that the hyperlink has been removed. Adding a hyperlink to text Now that we have removed a hyperlink we will add a hyperlink again from scratch. In this case first select the text that you wish to use as a hyperlink i.e. info@example.com. Then press Ctrl+C to copy this address to the clipboard. Make sure the text containing the address is still selected and then click on the Insert Link button within the toolbar Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

96 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 96 The Insert/Edit Link dialog box is displayed. Click within the URL section of the dialog box and press Ctrl+V to insert the address. NOTE: As this is an link edit the link to be: Then click on the Add Link button at the bottom right of the dialog box. As you can see the hyperlink has now been restored to the selected text. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and type in the following text. To find out more about our off-site backup services, please click here What we are going to do is to link part of this sentence to another page. A classic mistake that most people make is they will highlight the text please click here and then add a hyperlink to another page using this text. The text that is used to hyperlink to another page is referred to as Anchor text. It is important to realise that anchor text gives you an opportunity to improve the search engine optimisation of your website. What I mean by this is that if you used the text click here as your anchor text then Google will assume that the word s Click Here are important to your website. If on the other hand your anchor text contains some of the keywords that are important to your particular website then Google will take the hint and will know that your particular keywords within the anchor text are important and this will improve your search engine positioning. In this particular sample website the entire website is about offering off-site backup services. First of all delete the text please Click Here. Select the text Off-Site Backup Services Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

97 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 97 Click on the Insert Link icon within the toolbar. The Insert/Edit Link dialog box will be displayed. NOTE: You should see a list of your pages towards the bottom of the dialog box. If you do not see this list of pages click on an item that says all linked to existing pages and the list will expand so you can see the list of pages. If necessary scroll down the list of pages until you see a page called Why Use Us? Making sure this page is still selected click on the Add Link button at the bottom right of the dialog box. If you examine your text you will see that the hyperlink has now been inserted into the selected text as illustrated. So not only have we created a hyperlink that in this case will go from one page to another page we have also used optimal anchor text to get the maximum SEO benefit from this link. Click on the Preview Changes button at the top right of your screen and you will see the page displayed as a visitor to your website would see it. As you can see the hyperlink is displayed towards the bottom of the page Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

98 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 98 If you click on this link you will find you automatically change to a new page as your browser will follow the hyperlink embedded in your anchor text. You should see the page displayed as illustrated below. Switch back to your WordPress editing page. Inserting text links to other websites So far you have seen how to insert links between pages or posts within your website. Now we will insert a hyperlink to a totally different website. Go down to the bottom of the contact us page and type in the text: For information about Microsoft. Select the text that you have just typed in. Click on the Insert Link button within the WordPress toolbar. The Insert/Edit Link dialog box will be displayed. Within the URL section of the dialog box type in the web address for Microsoft which is: 2016 Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

99 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 99 Click on the Add Link button at the bottom right of the dialog box. Click on the Preview Changes button, at the top right of your screen. Scroll down the page and you should see the link to the Microsoft website displayed towards the bottom of the page. Click on the hyperlink to Microsoft and you will see the Microsoft website displayed. Click on the Back button to return to your website. Creating links that open in a new window or a new tab If you are linking to a separate website you have just seen a potential danger. By default when you insert a hyperlink to another website you will see that when you actually use this web page and click on that link you were taken from your website to a totally different websites i.e. a visitor clicking on this sort of link will jump to somebody else s website and leave your website. This can have the effect of people starting on your website then going to a different website and never coming back to your website in which case you have just lost a potential customer. A nice little trick you can use is to modify the way the link works so that when you link to somebody else s website, that second website will open up in a new tab or in a new window. This means that when they have investigated the other website they can simply close that website down and then automatically return to view your website. Switch back to your administration side of WordPress and you should see the Contact Page displayed. If necessary scroll down and highlight the link pointing to the Microsoft website at the bottom of the page. Then click on the Insert Link button. The Insert/Edit Link dialog box will be displayed and if you look carefully you can see there is a checkbox labelled Open Link in a new Window/Tab. Click on this checkbox so that this feature is now active, and then click on the Add Link button at the bottom right of the dialog box. Again preview the changes you have made to your website by clicking on the Preview Changes button. This time you will find that if you click on this link to Microsoft that the Microsoft site opens in a new window or tab. When you close down the tab or window containing the Microsoft site you can still see your own website displayed Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

100 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 100 So in summary always use the feature that allows you to open external websites within a new window or new tab. Make sure you do not use this feature when linking to pages or posts within your website as this will result in your users having multiple tabs for windows open and will just annoy them. Close any new tab that may have been displayed and return to the administration side of your WordPress website. Image links So far we have seen how to add hyperlinks to text. What we will do now is add a hyperlink to a picture. At the moment we don t have any pictures, so the first thing we have to do is to insert a picture into a page. Go down to the bottom of the contact us page and then click on the Add Media button which is displayed above the toolbar. If you don t see any pictures displayed click on the Media Library button. Click on a picture to select it, and then click on the Insert into Page button at the bottom right. You will then see the picture inserted into the bottom of the page as illustrated Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

101 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 101 Click once to select the picture. The picture should now be surrounded by eight handles as illustrated. You will see two small icons displayed at the top left of the picture. Click on the Edit Image icon Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

102 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 102 If you look carefully you will see that by default when you insert an image into a page or post the picture links to the image file behind the picture. What I mean by this is that by default the link will point to the JPEG or GIF file that is used to store the picture itself Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

103 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 103 Close the dialog box. In most cases this is not very useful, so what we want to do is to change the link so that it will point to another page or post rather than pointing to the original image file. To see the effect of this default self-linking, click on the Preview Changes button and when the web page is displayed try clicking on the image displayed at the bottom of the page. You will see something similar to the illustration below. Switch back to the WordPress editing page so that you can re-edit the link. If necessary, click once on the picture to select it and then click on the Unlink button in the WordPress toolbar. This will remove the existing link. If you click on the Preview Changes button to view your changes you can move the mouse button over the image and you will see it no longer changes to the shape of a hand indicating the image is hyperlinked. Switch back to the WordPress editing page. If necessary, click once on the picture to select it Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

104 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 104 Within the WordPress toolbar click on the Insert/Edit Link button. Click on one of the pages listed towards the bottom of the dialog box. In the example shown below, we have selected the Terms and Conditions page. Then click on the Add Link button. Click on the Preview Changes button and when the web page is displayed try clicking on the picture and you will find that you automatically move to a new page, as specified by the hyperlinking behind the image. One further point to be aware of is that if you switch back to the WordPress editing page and then click on the picture to select it if you click on the Insert/Edit Link icon this will display the following Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

105 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 105 If you look carefully you will see that the Open link in a new window/tab option has been selected. The reason for this is that we previously selected this option when we were inserting a previous link, in this case WordPress has remembered that we like having this option activated and it has remained active. As stated previously when you link from one page to another page within your website you shouldn t use this facility to open the links in a new tab or new window as this will annoy your visitors, so in this case to tidy up the link, click on the tick to remove it and then save the options so that in future when people click on the hyperlinked image they will simply view the page in the existing window rather than viewing the page within a new tab or new window. Inserting links If you want to add an link to selected text or a picture, you would need to select the text or picture and then click on the Insert Link icon. This will display the Insert Link dialog box. In order to link to an address you need to use a special syntax. If you wanted to link to an address at info@example.com, you would actually enter: mailto:info@example.com within the dialog box Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

106 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 106 YouTube Videos In this section you will see just how incredibly easy it is to embed a YouTube video within a page or post. Inserting a YouTube video into a page If necessary display the WordPress dashboard and within the left side menu move the mouse to the Pages item, and from the submenu select All Pages. Open the page called Why Use Us? Move the cursor to the space between one of the paragraphs and press the Enter key a few times to insert a few more spaces. Type in a row of six Xs as illustrated below. Later we shall replace this line with your embedded video. If necessary open up your Internet browser and display the YouTube homepage, which is located at Search YouTube using the phrase computer data backup. A list of related videos will be displayed. Click on any video that looks interesting and it will start playing. Click on the Pause button to pause the video Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

107 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 107 Getting the YouTube video embed code If you look carefully at the screen you will notice that underneath the video are a number of buttons as illustrated. If you click on the Share button you will see the following. By default, the code that is displayed will allow you to link to this particular video Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

108 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 108 However what we want to do is to embed this video in our page rather than simply link to it from the page. In order to do this, simply click on the Embed item. Once you have clicked on the embed item you will see the embed code displayed as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

109 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 109 You will notice that the embed code is already selected so if you press Ctrl+C you can copy the selected code to the clipboard. Now switch back to the page you are editing within WordPress. If you look to the top right of the editing section you will notice two tabs, one called Visual and the other one is called Text. Click on the text. After clicking on the Text tab you will see the HTML code behind the page as illustrated below. If necessary, scroll down until you can see the series of Xs that we typed in earlier. Double-click on the Xs to select them and then press Ctrl+V to paste the embed code from the clipboard into your page. Click on the Visual tab which is displayed over to the top right, you will again see your page displayed as it is normally within WordPress and you will also see a yellow area which marks the area within which the video will be displayed Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

110 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 110 Click on the Preview Changes button displayed to the right of the screen. As you can see the video is now displayed and is embedded within the page. If you click on the video it will start running. What you have done here is to embed a YouTube video into your page which means that you can view the video within your page or your post rather than having to go over to YouTube, fire up a link and watch it on YouTube. If you create your own videos and post them to YouTube you can use this embedding method to display your own videos within your pages or posts. If you simply link from a page or post to YouTube the danger is that people will click on the link within your site and switch over YouTube and may never return to your site in which case you have lost potential business. This is why it is always much better to embed rather than link videos Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

111 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 111 Posts So far we have created a website which includes a couple of pages. In this section you can see how to create posts. Creating a new post If necessary, display the WordPress Dashboard and then click on the New item displayed in the main menu across the top of the page. From the submenu displayed click on Post. The Add New Post screen will be displayed as illustrated below. Entering a post title What most people do at this point is click within the section called enter title here and simply type in a new title and then click within the body area and start typing the text for the new post. There is nothing wrong with this direct typing method but what I do is I create my posts including a title in a Microsoft Word document and then carefully check them and once they are ready in the Microsoft Word document I simply copy and paste the text into my WordPress post Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

112 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 112 Open the Windows Explorer and view the contents of the DVD. You should see a sub-folder called WordPress Sample Files and if you look inside that folder you will a document called Special Offer. Select the header text as illustrated below and then press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text to your clipboard. Then switch back to the new post within WordPress, click within the Add Title area and press Ctrl+V which will Paste the text into your post. Entering post text in the body area Then switch back to the Microsoft Word document and select the body text of a particular post as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

113 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 113 Then switch back to your post within WordPress click within the body area. Using Paste from Word to copy text from Microsoft Word to a past Now rather than simply pressing Ctrl+V to paste the text into the data area click on the Paste from Word icon displayed in the WordPress toolbar. The reason that we use the Paste From Word technique rather than pasting directly into the body area of the post is that by using this method you will strip out any behind-the-scenes formatting codes that have been embedded into the word document. This way you get nice clean code which will be inserted into your post. Once you click on the Paste from Word icon you will see the Paste from Word dialog box displayed as illustrated. Click within this dialog box and then press Ctrl+V to paste the information from the clipboard. Click on the Insert button at the bottom right of the Paste from Word dialog box. You will then see the text displayed within the body of the post as illustrated Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

114 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 114 Publishing a post If necessary remove any extra spaces that may be displayed within your post. Once you are happy with the appearance of your post you can then click on the Publish button which is displayed over to the right of the screen. At this point your newly created post is live and will be able to be seen by any visitors to your website. Repeat these steps to create some more posts using the sample data within the word document. By the time you have finished you will have created a total of 4 new posts using the titles listed below. - Data backup special offer - Training seminar protecting your data - Reseller seminar - Advanced Excel training course 2016 Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

115 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 115 Viewing a list of your posts Once you have created all your new posts, click on the Posts item displayed down the left side of the WordPress screen. From the submenu displayed click on All Posts. You will now see a list of your posts as illustrated below. Deleting a post If you look at the list of posts you will see there is an extra post called Hello World. This is a sample post that is created for you when you install WordPress Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

116 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 116 We do not want to keep this sample post called Hello World so we need to delete it. To do this, move the mouse pointer over hello world and you will see some options displayed directly underneath it. Click on the Trash option. If you look at the list of posts the Hello World post has now been removed. Deleted posts are moved to the trash bin and can be un-deleted NOTE: When you trash an item it doesn t disappear immediately but is moved to a trash area. If you look at the top of the screen above the list of posts you will see a link called trash and if you inadvertently delete a post you could click on this and retrieve the deleted post. This is a safety measure that you should remember in case you accidentally delete the wrong post. Editing existing posts Even though you have published your four posts you can edit them at any time in the future after publishing. In this case click on the post called Advanced Excel Training Course. Make a few changes to the text so for instance you could insert an extra line after the word premises. Select the first paragraph of text and then click on the bold icon within the WordPress toolbar to make that paragraph display in bold. You can make any formatting changes you wish so for instance you could indent lines, change the colour of text, add bullet points etc. Inserting text hyperlinks into a post Select the line that says Contact us for details. Then click on the Insert/Edit Link button within the toolbar as illustrated Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

117 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 117 The Insert/Edit Link dialog box will be displayed and if you scroll down the list of pages you can select the Contact Us page and then click on the Add Link button at the bottom right of the dialog box. This will insert a hyperlink into the selected text which should be displayed in blue and with underlined text. Formatting text within posts As you can see formatting text within a post and inserting hyperlinks into a post uses exactly the same techniques as you used when creating pages. Click on the Preview Changes button over to the right of the screen and you will see the post as a visitor to your site would see it Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

118 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 118 Once the post is displayed try clicking on the link at the bottom of page to make sure it does link to your contact page. Differences between pages and posts As creating pages and posts are so similar, you might be wondering what are the differences between a page and post. Pages are normally used for information that stays put on your website. What I mean by this is items such as your home page, the contact page, the about us page and other pages such as maybe your products or your prices pages. These sorts of pages contain information that is long-lasting and not likely to change much over time. Posts on the other hand tend to be used to display information that may be of a temporary nature such as news or special offers. The other feature about posts is that it can be interactive and at the bottom of the post you normally see a section inviting comments from your visitors. When people talk about a blog they are normally talking about posts rather than pages and even though on this course you are creating a website what you can do is effectively create a blog within your website. If you look carefully you will see other features displayed on the post that are not displayed within your pages. If you look towards the bottom of the post you will see a section that invites your visitors to leave a reply and I can type in a comment and post that, to the website. In a later section we will see how to moderate these comments because you do not want to allow visitors to your website to be able to post comments that are automatically displayed without you first checking the content is appropriate. Also there is a lot of automated spam on the Internet that will search for places where comments can be left and unfortunately the ability to leave a comment will attract spam. If you look carefully at the website you will see the pages that you created are displayed within the menu across the top of the page as illustrated below however the posts that you created are not displayed Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

119 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 119 Creating a Home Page for posts What we will do now is create what will effectively be a second home page for our blog, and within this blog home page all of our posts will be listed. The most recent posts being listed at the top and earlier posts being listed further down the list. If necessary switch back to the WordPress administration view and within the menu displayed down the left-hand side click on Posts and from the submenu displayed click on Add New. Once the Add New page screen is displayed, click within the Title area and enter some text such as Our Blog. Within the body area of the page again type in some text such as See our latest news Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

120 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 120 Click on the Publish button over to the right to publish this new page. Notice that we have just created a new page not a new post. We can now setup a blog that will appear within a menu system. To do this, within the menu running down the left side of the page, click on Settings and from the submenu displayed click on Reading. If you remember previously we set up a static page for our front page or home page. What we will do now is to set up a static page for our posts. To do this, click on the down arrow to the right of the posts page section and select the page that you wish to act as effectively the home page for our blog which in this case is called our blog, as illustrated below 2016 Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

121 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 121 Click on the Save Changes button to save your changes. If you click on the Preview Changes button again to see how it is going look to your visitors if you look carefully at the menu you will now see that there is an item for the page called Our Blog listed within the menu. If you go and click on the Our Blog link you will see all your blogs listed, with the most recent one listed at the top as illustrated below Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

122 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 122 If necessary scroll down the page to see the other blogs listed. So in effect what you now have is a website with a blog containing posts within the website. Recent Posts widget display If you look over to the right of your screen you will see a section called Recent Posts and if you look carefully you will see all the posts you ve created have automatically been listed in this section. This is one of the great things about creating posts; a lot of the associated work is performed automatically for you as in this case. If you were to create more posts they would automatically be displayed at the top of this section. Editing existing posts Remember that once you have created a post you can always go back and edit it so for instance if you return to your WordPress administration screen then click on Posts and from the submenu click on All Posts you will see a list of your post displayed. Inserting an image into a post Click on the Advanced Excel training course post to open it. Once this post is displayed move down to the bottom of the post and click within the post Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -

123 WORDPRESS MASTERCLASS Page 123 Click on the Add Media button displayed just above the WordPress toolbar. Click on one of the pictures that are displayed within the media library. Click on the Insert into Post button and you will see the picture has been inserted into the post for you. As you can see this works in exactly the same way as it did for pages. As always, if you want to preview the changes, simply click on the Preview Changes button over to the right and you can see the page as a visitor to your site would view it. Later we will see more about posts and see how you can also use categories and tags with your posts Cheltenham Group Pty. Ltd. -